Finance Apprentice Review

As a finance apprentice at AstraZeneca I have three rotations in my two year apprenticeship. I am currently based within a project team meaning I work on different tasks weekly depending on what is required upon from the team. Daily I have calls within my sub team, where I talk to people around the role where we each give an update on what we are working on and if we need any help. My typical tasks involve extracting financial data from different KPI (key performance indicator) tools, investigating this data and looking into results that should not occur based on the transaction. Outside of my team, I am also involved within different projects, such as creating an informative video of the finance apprenticeship and getting involved with helping prepare for pride month activities.

Whilst being on his apprenticeship I have learnt and developed lots of different skills. At college, I am completing the AAT level 3/4 accounting qualification. This has allowed me to learn a brand new skill of learning how to account. As well as studying the qualification, we also receive skills days at college. Recently, I have just attended a skills day at college on team working and collaboration. In this day I learnt the different roles within a team to operate effectively and how to negotiate. During completing my assigned tasks at work, I have developed my existing skills in multiple platforms including MS PowerPoint, MS Excel and MS Teams. In Excel, I now know a range of formulas that can be used to increase efficiency on a task and understand how to use formatting tools. I have also learnt brand new skills at work, including how to use Celonis, SAP and MicroStrategy. For all three systems I can export data and use their interfaces to find out more information. At work, I have received internal and external training courses that helped develop my skills on how to present PowerPoints effectively, how to manage time effectively and how to network. Through being on this apprenticeship journey, I have developed my professional and personal skills of being punctual, keeping organised and improving my confidence.

I have enjoyed my finance apprenticeship at AstraZeneca. In particular, I have enjoyed working with people from around the world, understanding different cultures. The company culture at AstraZeneca, made the transition from 6th form to an apprenticeship really enjoyable from day 1. Everyone I have met at work is friendly and always trying to help you. For example, when I have struggled with a concept in my accounting qualification a team member has gone through it with me, which I found very helpful. I feel valued as a team member. The office is really nice and clean with lots of different plants spread out giving a calm environment. When starting this apprenticeship I thought the work side of the apprenticeship would involve more of the accounting side of finance. Instead I have learnt more about finance, applying some of the knowledge on accounting to my work tasks. However, I believe this has worked out for the better, as accounting itself is repeatable whereas in this job role there is different tasks which makes the role more interesting.

The programme has been well organised. At the start of the apprenticeship, I received lots of induction training on how to use the systems AstraZeneca uses. I found the task delegation to be good - rarely having to wait for a task to be given to me. When I have had to wait for a task, there's been other things that I have needed to do for college. The tasks themselves have been challenging enough to develop my skills. Once I've finished a task the task will go through what I have done in the task, and go through parts of the task I may have done wrong. There has been lots of support for me. When I have struggled with using a new system at work there has been training online and short videos available on different AZ platforms. If I would like to talk to someone about something, there is lots of different people around me. When I have been nervous for an exam, I have been able to have meetings with someone from college to go through some past paper questions with me. Due to being a new programme, there was some questions about how long each rotation within each team would last and how many rotations there would be.

I receive lots of support from AstraZeneca. I have a line manager, a skills and development coach, a buddy (an apprentice who is a couple of years into their apprenticeship) and a mentor. I have a good relationship with my support bubble, with active weekly calls and occasional in person informal discussions.

At college, I have a development coach who I speak with every couple months who stays with me throughout the apprenticeship. For each module of the course I have a specific tutor who teaches me the module. The tutor sends out their email, making it clear that if I am struggling with the module to give them an email and that they are here to help. I also have a dedicated member of the college staff who checks up on me, who can also help with any general query's to do with college. For college, it is in person for the module. To start with, I found college quite hard as it was all new content. However, my manager was flexible and allowed me to spend some work time going through online material. I also had a call with a member of the college who went through some of the content with me. After the first module, I found the rest of the modules easier.

The qualification helps me understand different aspects of my work tasks, such as understanding what the new terminology means, and how this affects what information should have been entered by the person posting the financial transaction. I have not put into practise what I have learnt from college, but instead applied it. For example, what I have learnt at college allows me to understand what the finance documents and diagrams are showing, whereas at work I have learnt how the financial transactions create the documents / diagrams.

At work there are some social events that have taken place. For example, there was a bowling trip for a big team of people. There is a volunteering events that I can sign up for to help the local community and get to know other people within the organisation. There is also opportunities to get involved in projects that are put of your personal scope - such as how I am helping out with the organisation of pride month activities, and there are opportunities to go into a completely different team for a couple of weeks.

Yes

AstraZeneca is a big organisation with lots of opportunities. It has a friendly culture and nice work environment. The programme can be flexible to you.

When preparing for the interview process, remember to look into AstraZeneca's values, understand if they align to yours and find examples where you have followed the values. During the assessment day you should be honest and open, and let the assessors understand who you are / what type of person you are.